Lightroom is a versatile program that offers a great combination of image-management features and photo-editing tools. That’s why it’s been my go-to editing software for over a decade now; it really is that good.
Though Lightroom’s features are certainly impressive, there are a handful of areas where the program just doesn’t meet my needs. I don’t want to get rid of Lightroom – like I said, I’ve appreciated the software for 10+ years! – so I rely on Lightroom plugins, which are designed to expand and enhance Lightroom’s capabilities. With the right plugins, you can have the best of both worlds: the consistent, smooth workflow provided by Lightroom as well as the latest technology for rapidly finding, organizing, and editing images.
There are dozens of great Lightroom plugins you can buy, but I have a few that I regularly recommend and that I’m excited to share with you today. Each of the plugins on this list has its own purpose, and while you don’t need to go out and buy all of them, I’d be surprised if you aren’t tempted by one or two.
Let’s dive right in!
Topaz Photo AI 3: The Best Image Enhancement Plugin
Topaz Labs is known for its AI-powered image-enhancement software, and the company’s latest all-in-one Lightroom plugin, Photo AI 3, deserves attention from every photographer.
Unlike Luminar Neo (also on this list, below), Photo AI 3 is designed for image enhancement, not image editing. In other words, the program lets you target various aspects of image quality but doesn’t include manual adjustment tools for precise tonal edits, color grading, vignetting, and so on. Photo AI 3 is very much a companion plugin that goes above and beyond Lightroom’s tools in a few key areas but won’t replace your Lightroom workflow entirely. Note that Photo AI 3 is available as a standalone program, but if you’re already a Lightroom user, I think the plugin version is the way to go.
Topaz Labs is perhaps most famous for its AI-powered upscaling technology, and that is indeed present in Photo AI 3. But the plugin includes a slew of other enhancement tools including Denoise (which comes in handy whenever you’re shooting at high ISOs or dealing with heavily underexposed files), Sharpen (great for recovering details that were lost due to camera shake or subject motion), and even Remove (which uses generative AI to seamlessly remove distractions from the scene).
What’s especially notable, however, is the Autopilot feature. When you enhance an image with Photo AI, the software analyzes the file from the get-go and suggests specific enhancements; you can then apply these suggestions with the click of a button. If you’re interested in improving your photos but you’re just not sure where to start, Autopilot should help you move past that initial anxiety – and over time, you’ll get a sense of which edits to apply to specific photos.
Whenever I’ve tested Topaz Labs programs, I’ve come away impressed. The enhancement features are top-notch, and the minimalistic interface makes it easy for inexperienced photographers to feel comfortable. My biggest criticism is the price; since I’m already paying for Lightroom, shelling out $199 for a program that simply improves upon Lightroom’s already proficient editing tools feels like a lot – but if image quality is a priority and you find yourself wishing for better sharpening and denoising tools, Photo AI 3 is worth the cost. (For those of you who are primarily interested in Photo AI’s upscaling feature, I’d recommend passing on Photo AI and checking out Gigapixel 7 instead, which offers Topaz Lab’s AI upscaling capabilities for half the price and is available as a Lightroom plugin.)
Excire Search 2024: The Best Plugin for Photo Organization
Most of the best Lightroom plugins offer tools for enhancing your photos, but Excire Search 2024 goes in a different direction: instead of helping you edit your images, Excire’s plugin leverages powerful AI to help you find, cull, and organize them.
My favorite Search 2024 feature is Search by Text Prompt, which lets you instantly find any image in your Lightroom catalog by inputting a text description. In other words, you type “Boy in red sneakers playing basketball,” and the plugin immediately shows you all the images in your Lightroom catalog of red-sneakered boys shooting hoops.
But Excire Search 2024 also includes plenty of other AI-powered image-management features. The Search for Faces and Search for People tools use facial-recognition software to find photos in your catalog based on specific features or even a reference image, and the Search by Aesthetics tool reorders your photos by aesthetic quality to dramatically speed up the culling process. There’s even an AI keywording feature, which can automatically apply keywords to your images upon import so you don’t have to.
Basically, if you ever wish you could find your photos more quickly – or organize them more effectively – then Excire Search 2024 is a plugin you don’t want to miss. It’s also worth mentioning that Search 2024 is unusually well-integrated into Lightroom; unlike other programs on this list, Search 2024 allows you to work within Lightroom so you’re not stuck going back and forth between the main Lightroom interface and a separate plugin window. Instead, simply choose Library>Plug-in Extras, then select the Excire tool you’re looking for from the fly-out menu.
Of course, Lightroom already boasts solid image-management features, but I know from experience that it takes a lot of effort to tag, search for, and cull files. With Excire Search 2024, you can take advantage of Lightroom’s existing features while also streamlining your workflow, saving time, and keeping your catalog organized.
Luminar Neo: The Best Plugin for AI Editing
I’ve spent a lot of time testing Skylum’s Luminar software over the years, and while I’ve always been frustrated by the lack of comprehensive editing and organization features, as a Lightroom plugin, Luminar Neo excels.
Luminar Neo’s biggest selling point is the bevy of easy-to-use AI editing tools. Every time I check, there seem to be more features – either as part of the core Luminar program or packaged as an extension. Sky AI, for instance, lets you swap out an image’s original sky for a replacement file, while Sunrays AI seamlessly incorporates sunrays into your shot, and Composition AI analyzes the image and automatically suggests a crop for maximum impact. You’ll also find a handful of AI-powered retouching features so you can edit skin, eyes, lips, and more with almost zero effort.
And then there are the extensions: Noiseless AI for intelligent noise reduction, Supersharp AI to help you recover details, and Focus Stacking so you can combine multiple shallow depth-of-field images into a single deep depth-of-field shot. The program also includes more basic image-editing features. Many of these overlap with Lightroom’s own editing tools, but there are some unique options for creative post-processing, including layers, relighting tools, glow effects, and more.
What’s nice about Luminar Neo is that you can choose between an annual subscription and a lifetime license, neither of which is terribly expensive (especially if you buy during a sale). And when purchasing a copy of Luminar Neo, you can install both the plugin and the standalone version, which prevents you from needing to choose between one or the other. I will note, however, that a few of Neo’s latest features, such as GenErase and GenExpand, can’t be accessed through the Lightroom plugin; for that, you’ll need to work in the standalone version.
DxO ViewPoint 4: The Best Perspective Correction Plugin
Out of all the image-editing plugins on this list, ViewPoint 4 is actually the one I use the most – not because it’s better than the others, but because my recent photos frequently include subjects in need of perspective correction (building exteriors, building interiors, and even landscape features such as trees).
I’m a longtime Lightroom user, but while Lightroom does include a few perspective-correction tools in its Transform panel, I’ve found its performance to be mixed. For fairly simple architectural shots with clear verticals and horizontals, Lightroom can deal with converging lines without much fuss; you can just tap the Auto or Vertical button, and the program will straighten up your buildings almost instantly. But when dealing with more complex images – files with deliberately non-straight building elements, with high-contrast lines on the ground, with horizon lines that are obscured by foreground elements, and so on – Lightroom fails to do a good job. It often seems like Lightroom is tricked by irrelevant lines in my photos and makes the images worse, rather than better, as a result.
That’s when I turn to DxO ViewPoint 4, which includes an amazing perspective correction panel but also boasts an array of other handy features for editing perspective: tools for handling distortion, for applying precise warp effects, and even for creating a fun tilt-shift effect. I spend most of my time in ViewPoint 4 working with the perspective correction panel, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
The plugin doesn’t have much of a learning curve, but it offers a ton of power. When I first tried ViewPoint 4 for myself, I couldn’t believe what I’d been missing – so if you’re a photographer that often captures architecture or you simply run into perspective issues when editing, ViewPoint 4 is worth the $99 price tag.
Nik Collection 7: The Best Plugins for One-Click Adjustments
If you’ve been in the photography world for a while, you’ve likely heard of the Nik Collection. The Collection has had something of a turbulent history; it was developed by Nik, then bought by Google, which made the plugins free to use. A few years later, it was bought by DxO, which has continued to develop the product alongside its own editing software but also brought back the paid model. In 2024, it’s still the most effective Lightroom plugin for one-click adjustments, and plenty of photographers use it to give their photos that final, professional touch.
The Nik Collection actually consists of seven different plugins, each with its own theme, including:
- Nik Silver Efex, which produces breathtaking black-and-white effects in a variety of styles
- Nik Analog Efex, which simulates film effects such as light leaks, grain, bokeh, and so much more
- Nik Color Efex, which offers 24 filters and plenty of beautiful one-click presets for all sorts of color and tonal adjustments
- Nik Dfine, which is a dedicated noise-reduction plugin that includes tools for measuring noise and selective denoising
It’s hard to say anything bad about the Nik Collection; not only do you get amazing one-click presets, but you can also create your own filters and apply manual tweaks as you see fit. At times, some of the tools can be overwhelming, but if you stick to the presets, that shouldn’t be a problem. Even the price isn’t bad, since you get seven plugins for a one-time fee of $159. I do wish that the seven plugins could be packaged into a single interface – it would make for an easier workflow – but that’s a minor issue.
I’ll also mention that DxO does offer a 30-day free trial on the Nik Collection, so if you’re not sure whether the editing effects are worth the cost, you can always spend a few weeks testing out the different features before making your decision.
Choose the Perfect Lightroom Plugin for Your Workflow
As you should now be aware, plugins are so much more than clunky and unnecessary Lightroom add-ons. Instead, the best options include cutting-edge technology (often powered by AI) to help you both edit and manage your photos.
If you’re looking to boost the quality of your images, then you can’t go wrong with the Topaz Photo AI 3 plugin; its denoising, sharpening, and upscaling algorithms are top-of-the-line, and the software is easy to use.
If photo editing and creative effects are more to your liking, then both Luminar Neo and the Nik Collection are tough to beat. Luminar Neo offers futuristic AI tools to simplify complex tasks (such as sky-swapping), while the Nik Collection’s seven plugins are great for adding finishing touches to your photos. For architecture, street, real-estate and other types of photographers who frequently need to apply perspective corrections, DxO ViewPoint 4 is the way to go.
Finally, if you want to speed up your image-organization workflow and search through your entire catalog in less than a second, Excire Search 2024 is the plugin to buy. The software’s AI technology is state of the art, and the seamless integration with Lightroom ensures a smooth image-management workflow.
So grab your favorite Lightroom plugin and enjoy!
